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Dec 17, 2018 By Mark Redfern Jim Goodwin

Christmas music doesn’t have to suck. It doesn’t have to all be uninspired covers of Christmas classics from yesteryear. For over a decade now my friend Jim Goodwin has lovingly been putting together an annual mix of indie rock Christmas songs, handing CDs out to friends and also posting it online via Mixcloud. Many of the artists are fairly obscure (I run a music magazine and even I haven’t heard of many of them), but he chooses based on the quality of the song, rather than the size of the artist. He has just released this year’s mix via his blog Christmas Underground, which year-round covers indie Christmas music, and you can stream it below.

Goodwin launched Christmas Underground in 2012. You won’t find any mentions of the latest pop star cover of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” or William Shatner’s recent Christmas album, Shatner Claus. “The premise of the blog was not just to talk up bands that I like, because many of the bands I like put out terrible Christmas songs, but to specifically try to find great songs from smaller bands,” Goodwin explains to me via email. “I’m not interested in Eric Clapton’s Christmas record, and would never touch that Shatner travesty, the site is really meant for great, lesser-known bands.”

Goodwin first started making his Christmas mixes when he was working at the Record Exchange in Roanoke, VA and all the employees agreed to trade Christmas mixes. Each of Goodwin’s mixes includes both current Christmas songs and ones from previous years.

“The songs don’t necessarily have to be from this year, in fact the mixes are often more than 50% from previous years. So much material is released in late December, that you would have to wait until Dec. 24 to release your mix and it would only be listened to for a day. I aim to release mine as early in December as I can, so it’ll likely have a lot of 2017 material on it,” Goodwin says, pointing out that the oldest track on this year’s mix is Eyes Lips Eyes’ “Slept in Through Christmas,” which came out in 2011.

Goodwin chooses his tracklist based on the individual song and how it works with the flow of the mix, rather than based on the stature or familiarity of the artist (for example, this year an acclaimed holiday track by Phoebe Bridgers, a cover of McCarthy Trenching’s “Christmas Song,” didn’t make the mix, despite Goodwin loving it, as the song was a bit of a downer).

“It always starts with the music,” Goodwin explains. “I can like the content a whole lot, but if the music itself doesn’t grab me, then it is not going to make it. Lyrics are important too, as I tend to celebrate a secular Christmas, so those looking for religious content can go look to pretty much every other Christmas album available. I’m open to a nice mix of politics, frustration, joy, sadness, and everything else the season brings. My mix does not have to be specifically happy, but I am not hoping to bring you down. When it all comes down, I really just want my mix to be interesting-enough music to be able to listen to in July and not go crazy.”

A fun detail of the Christmas mixes is the cover art. Every mix features a parody of a different Belle and Sebastian album, EP, or single cover, all featuring Goodwin in a Santa hat. “I am a big Belle & Sebastian fan, and don’t quite remember how I came to the realization that I could easily parody the cover of The Boy with the Arab Strap, but I got my roommate, had him shoot a photo of me with a Santa hat and a beard that I taped to my face, and created the first mix,” recalls Goodwin. “I quickly realized that Belle and Sebastian had a wealth of records that would lend themselves to hilarious (to me) Christmas parody covers. And now I am 14 years in and thankfully, there are still plenty of Belle and Sebastian LPs, EPs, and singles to choose from. Whenever they put out a new record, that’s usually the one I’ll do that year.”

This year’s cover is a parody of the cover art of the Scottish band’s 2018 EP How to Solve Our Human Problems (Part 3), with Santa Jim on the right, his wife Kelsey Goodwin to the left of him (with her hand over her face), along with the two models from the original cover. This year’s mix is thus fittingly titled How to Solve Our Christmas Problems. “Frustratingly few people ‘get’ my cover art,” Goodwin laments. But that’s okay, we get it and thought our readers might enjoy hearing his mix below.

Christmas Mix 2018: How to Solve Our Christmas Problem Tracklist:

01. “New Year Dreams” by Billy Changer, Los Angeles, Ca.
02. “Slept in Through Christmas” by Eyes Lips Eyes, Los Angeles, Ca.
03. “Shitty Christmas” by Babaganouj, Brisbane, Australia
04. “Then It Snowed” by Gabrielle Papillon. Halifax, Canada
05. “Come on Home for Christmas” by The Grubby Mitts, Bedford, England
06. “Le Dernier Noël” by Le Couleur, Montréal, Canada
07. “Swamp” by Futuro Pelo, Paris, France
08. “Footsteps” by Christmas Aguilera, London, England
09. “Noël Je Me Souviens De Tout” by Guillaume Cantillon, Montluçon, France
10. “Home Alone, Too” by The Staves, Watford, England
11. “But Once a Year” by Pictish Trail, Isle of Eigg, Scotland
12. “The First Snow in Years” by Richard Walters, London, England
13. “Holiday Ease” by Amy Stroup, Nashville, Tn.
14. “New Coats” by Saintseneca, Columbus, Oh.
15. “Winter in the Sun” by Fontaines D.C., Dublin, Ireland
16. “42 Degrees” by Matty Took, Sydney, Australia
17. “Next Year Will Be Mine” by Whyte Horses, Manchester, England
18. “It’s All Gunna Go Wrong This Christmas” by Dirty Nice, United Kingdom
19. “Natale A Ceneda” by Lullabier feat. Faro Vittorio, Veneto, Italy
20. “Christmas Eve at Kroger” by Traveller, United States
21. “CORRESPONDENCE: Silent Night” by Annika Norlin, Stockholm, Sweden
22. “The Only Time I’m Home” by Tom Rosenthal, London, England

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